Importing a table from an HTML file directly to Tableau

Question

I recall seeing a direct import of a table in a Wikipedia HTML document directly into tableau. Tableau's website has a method that involves using Google doc HTML import function

=ImportHtml("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bank_failures_in_the_United_States_(2008%E2%80%93present)","table",2)

to first import the tables into a Google spreadsheet and later download the spreadsheet that can be linked to Tableau.

Is there any way to import a Wikipedia table, or anyt other HTML doc directly into Tableau?

Thanks

Answer 1

Tableau lets you paste data from any application that uses csv delimited text on the clipboard (not all apps do). Here's a knowledge based article on it. http://onlinehelp.tableausoftware.com/current/pro/online/en-us/clipboard_datasource.html

Unfortunately, it didn't seem to work o nthe table you pointed out in your example, perhaps the HTML is too complex. But if you can somehow export the table as CSV, it can be loaded in Tableau.

Tableau Version 8 is due out soon, and has a couple different new APIs available that should help with connecting to data from various sources.